馃挰 Feedback on the GitLab Web IDE Beta
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Welcome to the GitLab Web IDE Beta! We're thrilled to make the next generation of our Web IDE available to everyone to try out. We'd love to hear what you think!
But first...
Why are we doing this?
The GitLab Web IDE was in a sort of in-between area. It's not a full "IDE" in that it can't compile code and it's not customizable to match a developer's personal workflows. But it's also way more powerful than our Web Editor, a single-file editing experience that is super fast but can be limiting if you want to do anything more than fix a typo or write some Markdown. The solution we came up with, and the reason you're reading this issue, is to replace the current Web IDE, which is based on the open-source Monaco editor, with a client-side instance of VS Code. Some more detail on that decision can be found on our blog, but now for the fun stuff!
How can I use it?
If you use GitLab.com and you're reading this, I'll assume you're already using it. But for the record: The Web IDE Beta is available to everyone as of 2022-12-19 and will be the default Web IDE experience on GitLab.com. Self-managed users have the same functionality, but it's behind the vscode-web-ide
feature flag. If you decide the Beta is not for you, or at least not right now, you can switch back to the previous version in Profile > Preferences. Look for the Use Web IDE Beta
setting.
We'll keep the previous version of the Web IDE around until we're out of Beta, which we're currently targeting GItLab in %16.0.
What can it do?
A lot. It's VS Code under the hood, so expect a lot of familiar functionality there. Things we wanted to build for the Web IDE for a long time, like:
- Extensive customization options
- Flexible UI options like collapsible panels and split views
- Contextual actions and drag & drop support in the file browser
- Find & replace across multiple files
There's also a fair bit of custom functionality. We built the source control extension from the ground up to be more reliable and more performant than ever before. We have adapted the much-loved "one step" commit flow from the Web IDE. We're also excited to release the first feature from Category:Remote Development - learn more on the Remote Development Direction page. Now you can connect the Web IDE to a self-hosted remote development environment and interact with a live terminal right inside the Web IDE!
What's next & known issues
We're still in Beta and we're working hard on additional functionality like:
- Support for VS Code extensions and an integrated marketplace
- Find & replace across the entire project
- Advanced git operations
- Settings sync and project-level customization
Where we need your feedback
Leave us a comment below! We want to know how you're using the Web IDE, where you're running into issues, and what you are looking forward to the most.